Netflix’s ‘Girl’ Sparks Controversy Over Underage Nudity
By Claire Spellberg - Decider
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Netflix is pretty much all hands on deck when it comes to showing nudity, but the streaming giant is taking a step back when it comes to Girl, a new film from Belgian director Lukas Dhont. Girl wowed audiences at the Cannes Film Festival with its moving depiction of a transgender girl training to become a ballerina, but now the film is at the center of a controversy about underage nudity. According to Chris Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter, Dhont recently said that Netflix planned to edit out a scene featuring young star Victor Polster fully nude, which seemed to distress the filmmaker. However, Dhont has since walked back the statement, saying that the full frontal scene will be included in the version that hits Netflix on January 18.
Netflix first grabbed the rights to Girl at Cannes, where the film won four awards, including the Fipresci Prize (an international critics’ prize) in the Un Certain Regard section, the festival’s nontraditional, experimental competition. Dhont’s film was later selected to represent Belgium in the foreign-language Oscar race, bringing even more attention to the drama and its young director. Shortly after, Dhont told a European newspaper that Netflix would be editing out a scene that shows Polster, who is 16 now but was 15 at the time, fully nude to make the film more palatable for viewers around the globe.
This week, Dhont told THR that he and Netflix have settled the dispute. “Regarding reports made this week in the Belgian media, we as filmmakers had some internal conversations with Netflix in which we discussed how some of the material in Girl could possibly be received outside of Europe,” he said. The filmmakers “were given the option to be able to edit the film,” and after “a dialogue,” they decided to leave the film as-is. “The version of Girl that will be shows on Netflix will be the same version which premiered in Cannes, and in theaters in Belgium and in other parts of the world,” said Dhont.
Girl hits Netflix on Friday, January 18.
